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The Lowline, a controversial project that plans to create a bizarre underground park in the Lower East Side, has gained its first official approvals from City Hall. For its detractors, the park represents another step towards gentrification. For its supporters, the park is a way of opening up public space in a dense area of the city. For Alicia Glen, deputy mayor for housing and economic development, its “some crazy, smoking-dope stuff.” She likes it. [Curbed]

Activists in Boyle Heights, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Los Angeles, want the art galleries to pack up and get out. The organizers view the gallery owners as pawns in “planners and politicians and developers” efforts to “art wash” gentrification. Some gallery owners are upset, while others are attempting to join in the dialogue. We’ll keep an eye on this story as it develops. [LA Weekly]

A 91-year-old woman was arrested at the Neues Museum Nürnberg on Thursday. Charges of vandalism were related to the fact that she “solved” a crossword puzzle that was part of a work by the Fluxus-artist Arthur Köpcke. Something tells us the Fluxus people would like this story. [artnet News]

The New Museum’s newest show, The Keeper, is an attempt to explore why we collect things. It’s packed, floor-to-ceiling with 4,000 objects from two dozen collections. It opens next Wednesday. The Times talks to the curators about this unusual show. [New York Times]

Check out the convoluted history of the McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ it” jingle. It’s fascinating that even people that worked on the campaign at a high-level don’t seem to know for sure who wrote it. [Pitchfork]

Hyperallergic breaks down some OKCupid data. Among the findings: liberal artists don’t think orgasms are the most important part of sex. It’s all about the journey, not the destination. [Hyperallergic]

We know surprisingly little about NYC’s rat population. For instance, it’s estimated that there are somewhere between two and 32 million rats in the city. We’re just not sure. Researchers have begun to chip and surveil them, hoping to get a better understanding of how they operate. The end goal is to find more effective methods of control. [Motherboard]

Another first-person essay discusses how awful it is to try to date on OkCupid. “But from an economic perspective, it’s fascinating to see how I look at all of this [profiles] not as an array of wonderful possibilities, but as a scarcity of options.” [The Billfold]

The witch is dead. Michele Bachmann gives her farewell speech, casually mentioning that millions of dollars were spent to keep her from her post, and she was given even more to stay—in other words, elections are bought. In a few sentences, Bachmann expresses that Native Americans were righteously replaced by Christians; all the men in her constituency are good-looking; and the House is entrusted with “the nation’s credit card.” Again, this woman held the nation’s credit card. [Wonkette]

This piece on how ten years of work in academia prepared the author for her new job at BuzzFeed mostly reveals enormity of BuzzFeed’s resources. [Buzzfeed]

Williamsburg is getting an Apple store. This announcement comes just days after the Williamsburg Funeral parade. [Gothamist]

Just in time for the holidays, a reminder that your flight experiences could be so, so much worse. In a bureaucratic morass dubbed “Nut Rage,” one airline executive, after quarreling with flight attendants over the presentation of her complimentary nuts, ordered the plane to be returned to its gate at JFK. [The Seattle Times]

If we link disproportionately to Vulture, it’s because they’re cranking out more bloggage than our feedly can keep up with. Anyway Eric Fischl curated a show about dolls. Here’s the slideshow. [Vulture]

“[A] potent antidote to the feeding frenzy at Art Basel Miami Beach”: Andrew Russeth interviews Hans Haacke, an artist of rare political awareness, and one of the few who consistently uses Seth Siegelaub’s 1971 resale royalties contract. [ARTnews]

Four men attempt to wrestle a bear. Lesson learned? Bears are great wrestlers. [YouTube]

Just what we needed—another art fair. Independent Projects opens November 6, in just over a week. It’s held in the old Dia building, site of the Independent fair held in the spring. Expect solo booths from a motley bunch of dealers ranging from Bushwick’s’ finest to Upper East Side mainstays like Gagosian. [Independent Projects]

If you care about other people’s personal lives, the Internet has a story for you! Famous CBC host Jian Ghomeshi claims he was fired because of his private BDSM lifestyle. Is this the next level of discrimination? Add a vengeful ex-girlfriend to the mix and we have 50 Shades of Grey meets Gone Girl. [Facebook]

Look, we don’t know what happened, really. However, according to the Toronto Star, three women 20 years his junior have come forward over the last few months claiming that Ghomeshi forced them to engage in nonconsensual, violent sex. [Toronto Star]

A lesson in public shaming (and one of our favorite reads from over the weekend): Monica Lewinsky pens an insightful essay that brings up an important question. Where were all the feminists when she was dragged out in front of the press? [Vanity Fair]

According to OkCupid, people in Montana, Oregon, and Wisconsin take fewer showers than anyone else using the dating site. [Slate]

What is hipster photography? Marco Bohr provides a fascinating and detailed description. Typically, the genre depicts people who look happy and carefree and are often joined by others who look the same. These people are young, good looking, and often white. They are almost never in suits. Perhaps most interesting, though, is that Bohr observes a lack of class identifiers in these pictures, positing that what these images really project is class mobility through the knowledge of what’s “cool.” Naturally, these images are meant to be shared. [Visual Culture Blog]

The University of Texas at Dallas is investing in a $17 million art history institute emphasizing data analysis. [Dallas Morning News]

In Sweden, artists who exhibit in state-run museums must be paid a stipend. That’s the rule, but plenty of institutions have been evading payment. [The Art Newspaper]

The Conscientious photo portfolio competition 2014 deadline closes October 31st. This is a competition aimed at emerging photographers and offers an interview on the site. [CPH]

Actress Tilda Swinton scrunched herself into a glass box at MoMA for all to see. [The Atlantic Wire]

The Chicago Headline Club announced finalists for the Peter Lisagor Awards. Now in its 36th year, the award recognizes outstanding journalism produced over the previous year. No surprise, Art F City contributor Jason Foumberg makes the cut in the “Arts Reporting and Criticism” category. [Headline Club]

Klaus Biesenbach tweeted pictures from the future home of MoMA PS1’s second-ever Volkswagen Dome in the Rockaways. So far, there’s a wooden deck. [Twitter]

Google, after announcing it will pull the plug on Google Reader, unveiled a new, Evernote-inspired app. Nice try, Google, but you can’t win your way back into our blogger hearts so easily. [Mashable]

Bushwick artists, get ready to put on your very best Bob Ross impersonation. This Sunday, The Active Space will host a Bob Ross-inspired painting takedown where competing artists will duke it out over who can paint the best “Rossian” landscape. If you’re a happy trees type of painter, let The Active Space know because they need more artists. [The Brooklyn Paper]

The New York Post is looking for OkCupid users to profile on its weekly dating column, “Meet Market”. They’re trying to turn OkCupid into “Love Connection” of old, where readers get to vote on which dude gets to go on a date with a girl. They’ve already sent out some willing OkCupiders on dates (the paper will pay for all your drinks and vittles, except for the tip), with mixed results. Here’s where you sign up. [The New York Post]

Billionaire MOCA board member Steven A. Cohen will not be going to jail. Over the last year, his hedge fund SAC Capital has been under investigation by the government, but with the announcement of a settlement between SAC and the feds, the Treasury will now be receiving a whopping $614 million payout. [The Daily Beast]

We have reason to suspect that Greg Allen has been on a six year Indiana Jones-style quest that ends tomorrow with an opening at apexart. In 2007, he wrote a post on the first satellites for TV and radio communication, giant space balls, or satteloons [greg.org], which would have been visible to the naked eye. The launch of one “American Star,” he wrote, “helped to ease Americans’ Space Age insecurity.” Greg noted that America’s launch into space seems to have made an enormous impact on artists like Anish Kapoor, Tom Sachs, and Francis Alys; at the end of his post, he announced that he would be hunting down the original test models and photos. The show opens tomorrow night at 6 PM. [apexart]